Susan SmithSusan Smith has worked as an editor and writer in the technology industry for over 16 years. As an editor she has been responsible for the launch of a number of technology trade publications, both in print and online. Currently, Susan is the Editor of GISCafe and AECCafe, as well as those sites’ newsletters and blogs. She writes on a number of topics, including but not limited to geospatial, architecture, engineering and construction. As many technologies evolve and occasionally merge, Susan finds herself uniquely situated to be able to cover diverse topics with facility. « Less

Susan SmithSusan Smith has worked as an editor and writer in the technology industry for over 16 years. As an editor she has been responsible for the launch of a number of technology trade publications, both in print and online. Currently, Susan is the Editor of GISCafe and AECCafe, as well as those sites’ … More »

LiveLink integrates GIS with remote sensing and image processing

Mladen Stojic, vice president Geospatial, Intergraph, talked about their new Live Link product which integrates Intergraph GeoMedia objects into ERDAS IMAGINE. Intergraph is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hexagon acquired in 2011. What this product offers is what customers have been asking for – an integrated approach to desktop workflows, combining the desktop GIS capability of GeoMedia integrated with the raster remote sensing and image processing capabilities of ERDAS IMAGINE.

First shown at the Hexagon 2011 conference, Live Link is now available as a product for customers to use on their workstations.

Stojic said that in terms of integrating IMAGINE with Intergraph’s GeoMedia, it was relatively easy. “When Intergraph architected GeoMedia they started this process in the late nineties and they started from scratch sort of, from an architecture point of view, and designed it in a way that would allow other developers to take those geospatial components and then integrate them into their respective products and applications. So that means for data access, analysis for general mapping functions and capabilities, the ERDAS development team here in Atlanta literally took the GeoMedia objects which is that technology platform – the APIs, toolkit and so forth, and harvested out those pieces that we needed to facilitate a Live Link and integrated those directly into IMAGINE. There was no need to get developers to programmatically build something. We were able to take those components and directly and natively integrate them into IMAGINE.”

“Kudos to the Huntsville team for great architecture,” added Stojic. As a result, “We were immediately able to access the GeoMedia Warehouse of all these different data types and formats, mapping capabilities, analysis capabilities and integrate that into IMAGINE. So it was easy to take GIS and integrate it with remote sensing and image processing.”

ERDAS’ ultimate vision and desired outcome is to build one consolidated, integrated desktop capability more like a three in one, where GIS, image processing, photogrammetry and mapping are under one desktop, then connected to one integrated server platform. “So we would have a desktop platform and a server platform with the corresponding geoportal or web platform,” explained Stojic. “We are also now also researching and working on a mobile platforms technology. We would have four areas of focus with respect to technology and platform integration so that we can build a harmonized toolset for our customers, across not only GIS, remote sensing and photogrammetry but also across general mapping, the web and mobile technology.”

Stojic sees one of their strengths as being able to consolidate offerings into one package. This way they can break down departmental walls where people are using various disconnected products to facilitate data sharing, collaboration, extended utilization of geoinformation.

How can Live Link facilitate workflows in an organization that is using many types of technologies?

“The common ingredient with all these products, whether they’re our products or Esri products or some other product, is data,” said Stojic. “Our approach is data agnostic. Through partnerships with Oracle and Microsoft we have opened up data accessibility so that you don’t need to put everything into a proprietary database. That’s part of the silo – the walls put up around GIS departments. It’s also through a partnership with Safe Software, because you’ve also got to be able to connect to that GIS if it’s an Esri GIS. Through Safe, we have the adaptors or connectors to allow us to punch through that wall, connect into that data type, pull that data into something like Oracle or Microsoft, and then extend the utilization of that data to our products across the organization.”